


Embers

by MizJoely



Series: Heat Rises [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Gen, Omega Verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:01:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizJoely/pseuds/MizJoely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes a fire needs time to catch, but when it finally does, the resulting conflagration can warm as well as burn. Omegaverse Sherlolly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Heat

**Author's Note:**

> OK, so this story is kind of an experiment, a jaunt into the Omegaverse and exploring the A/B/O dynamic from a radically different angle than most of the other stories I've read, so I'm not sure what people will think. In other words, although the first half of the story will discuss things like Knotting and sex and Omegas going into Heat, there will be no actual in-story sex until Part 2.
> 
> The other kinda weird thing about this story is that I literally wrote it today. And will be posting it in three parts: this prologue, another sort-of prologue set 15 years later, and then the real meat and potatoes of the story, the part with the actual Sherlolliness. So, um, yeah. Enjoy, but if you hate it, I'd much rather have you tell me so in a PM than any other venue. Just sayin'.
> 
> Plus, I own nothing but the plot and the words in the character's mouths and the things I make them do. Everything else belongs to the BBC and Mofftiss.
> 
> Oh yeah - basically unbeated and unedited, but read over and encouraged to upload by the wonderful wickedwanton. Thanks, you're always a great help! And yes to anyone who cares, I am still working on "When Darkness Falls." This just sort of took over my life for a day.

**Prologue: 1984**

“Mycroft! Mycroft!”

Mycroft Holmes winced, knowing that angry, petulant tone even from far down the stairs. Something had happened to set off his younger brother’s volatile temper again, and knowing the six-year-old Alpha’s stubbornness, he wouldn’t shut up about it until Mycroft had either thoroughly explained it or taken care of whatever the problem turned out to be.

Sometimes he really, really hated being the elder brother. He was only thirteen, why did it always fall on him to explain things to Sherlock?

 _Because Father is rarely home, and he’s the only other Alpha Sherlock trusts_ , the cold, practical portion of Mycroft’s mind retorted.

Not that there were any other Alphas on the Holmes estate; Father was one of those who couldn’t tolerate even perceived competition on his own territory for long periods of time. Too sensitive to the scents, too apt to offer challenges even though he was in a class of his own and Lifebonded to boot. Conversely, those very traits made him a superb diplomat, since he tended to dominate other Alphas outside his own territory to great effect – and to the advantage of the British government. Mycroft knew he would follow in his father’s footsteps one day and have just as high a position, although not necessarily via the Diplomatic Corps. Too bad Mummy…

Mycroft scowled, an expression that look far too natural on his teenaged face. Could that be what this was about? He really, really hoped not. He’d heard his younger brother questioning Mummy on the differences between being Lifebonded – a biological imperative between Alphas and their Omega mates – and marriage, a convention based on religious and societal norms, but hadn’t paid attention to the conversation, busy with his summer reading list.

“Mycroft!” His brother’s shrill, insistent tones broke into his thoughts as he finally burst through the door to Mycroft’s study. “It isn’t fair!”

Mycroft sighed and closed his book, looking over at his brother with as neutral an expression as he could manage. 

The two brothers couldn’t have looked more different: Mycroft, pudgy and sandy blonde, Sherlock a skinny bit of nothing covered by a tangled mop of dark brown hair. Mycroft favored their mother, Sherlock their father, but both had inherited intense blue eyes from the Vernet side of the family. In that, they both favored their mother. “What is it, Sherlock?” he asked. “What isn’t fair this time?”

A great deal seemed unfair to his younger brother, with his passionate temper and seemingly endless capacity for asking questions. He braced himself, knowing his suspicions were about to be confirmed.

And so they were. “Mummy says she and Daddy can never be married cause she’s an Omega!” Sherlock was fairly vibrating with indignation, and Mycroft bit back a sigh. When did he become the one source for all wisdom for Sherlock?

Since he already knew the answer to that question – “since always” – he did his best to answer the one his brother had actually asked. “Look, Sherlock, that’s just the way the law works. Mummy and Father don’t have to be married like ordinary people, cause he’s a powerful Alpha and she’s an Omega. Lifebonding is much more important than marriage,” he added, hoping that answer would be enough.

May as well hope for the rain not to fall. Sherlock’s jaw jutted out in a very familiar, very stubborn pose. “But just cause Mummy’s an Omega, she’s still a person, why doesn’t she have the same rights as the rest of us? It’s not fair!” 

“You already said that,” Mycroft found himself snapping, mostly because he’d felt exactly the same way as Sherlock when he discovered how few rights Omegas had, even in the supposedly enlightened 20th century. “No, it’s not fair, but it’s the way the world works. There are biological reasons Omegas can’t have the same rights as other people. Things you wouldn’t understand,” he added, somewhat spitefully. Because no matter how intelligent his younger brother was, six was really and truly too young to understand the concept of Omega Heat cycles and knotting.

His face burned a bit red as he thought the forbidden word. He’d only learned about the sexual needs of Alpha males this past year, on one of their father’s brief visits home between diplomatic missions. Puberty had struck with a hammer blow; he’d woken up with far too many morning erections and the sight of the swollen glands at the base of his cock had panicked him into actually talking to his father about it.

That had been a very interesting conversation – but not one he was going to share with a six-year-old. Even though said six-year-old was vociferously demanding to know what Mycroft meant about biology and why he thought he couldn’t understand and…

“Sherlock!” Mycroft shouted, scowling at his brother as he stood before him, arms crossed and red-faced. He subsided, meeting Mycroft’s scowl with one of his own. “Look, there are laws about all kinds of things, right?” Sherlock nodded warily. “Well, sometimes they make sense and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they’re fair and sometimes they’re not. And sometimes,” he added, tromping over Sherlock’s clear intention to question him on that point, “they seem unfair when they’re really to protect people.”

That caught his brother’s interest; the scowl vanished, replaced by a puzzled expression. Good. That meant he was really listening and would actually think about what he was being told. “Omegas have a special biology that you’ll learn more about when you’re older,” Mycroft continued, softening his voice a bit. “It makes things difficult for them to just go about like other people, like Betas and Alphas and regular Humans.” Regular Humans, in fact, were the ones who insisted on the laws preventing Omega females from having the same rights as everyone else, but that was an entirely different matter and one he would allow Sherlock to one day discover on his own – when he was much, much older. “The laws are to protect them, not to punish them. The marriage law is like that, but it doesn’t matter, because Lifebonding really is more important. Did Mummy say she was sad that she couldn’t be married to Father?” he asked shrewdly.

Sherlock looked a bit shifty, which meant Mycroft’s interpretation was spot on. “Well, no,” he admitted after a minute of silent staring between the brothers. “She said I shouldn’t worry about it. That she was happy the way things were and that I’d understand when I was older.” The stubborn look returned to his face, the scowl almost as natural on his features as it appeared on Mycroft’s. “I hate when people tell me that, Mikey,” he pouted.

Mycroft relaxed. Once Sherlock started calling him by his family nickname, it meant he knew the battle was lost, at least for the moment. “Yeah, I always hate it, too, Sherly,” Mycroft confessed. “But just think; when we’re older, we’ll be able to tell it to kids, too.”

The brothers shared a grin, then the conversation turned to Sherlock’s current obsession, pirates, which Mycroft willingly entered into. He was leaving for boarding school in two weeks, and their time together after that would be limited to summers and holidays. 

He only hoped it wouldn’t cause too much trouble, for Sherlock not to have someone regularly on hand to turn to with his endless questions. His curious, agile mind was even sharper than his own, although it pained Mycroft to admit it. Still, they could always write to one another, and impulsively he told Sherlock, whose penmanship and grasp of grammar and spelling were almost equal to Mycroft’s own, to write down any troublesome questions he might have while he was at school, and he would do his best to answer them.


	2. Simmer

**Fifteen Years Later – 1999**

“Mycroft, I do wish you would stop trying to force your views on me.”

Twenty-one-year-old Sherlock was scowling. Twenty-eight-year-old Mycroft was scowling right back. He’d grown into his weight over the years, so that now he was almost as lean as his brother, all adolescent chubbiness completely vanished – although his younger brother never let him forget his former fondness for pastries and sweets and how it had affected his waistline.

“And I do wish you’d stop trying to deny the part biology plays in your life,” he shot back. “You’re an Alpha, Sherlock, that has been clear since long before you reached adolescence. Just because you have a higher level of self-control than most others…”

“Including you,” was the snide interruption.

Mycroft did his best to ignore the hit – he was Lifebonded to an Omega he’d met through one of the many agencies available for higher level Alphas and had been for three years now – although his irritation was growing. “…doesn’t mean you can ignore your body’s needs indefinitely,” he finished, his scowl deepening as he recognized the stubborn thrust of his brother’s chin. “At the very least you should go to a House of Heat and burn off some of the excess energy you’ve been building up…what, ever since you left Harvard?”

Sherlock’s red face told him he’d made a hit of his own that time. “It’s been that long, hasn’t it?” Mycroft pressed. “You’ve not been with an Omega since then, have you? And it’s beginning to affect more than your temper, I’ll wager.”

The way Sherlock suddenly refused to meet his eyes answered him more clearly than words. “It’s ridiculous,” his younger brother finally growled, raking frustrated fingers through his hair. The same mop of ridiculous dark curls he’d had since infancy; why wouldn’t he simply give in and chop them off was a mystery Mycroft had never plumbed. “Why should it make a difference if I Knot some random Omega or abstain? I’ve trained my body to respond to the control of my mind; to have it rebelling like some brainless adolescent at this late stage is utterly confounding!”

Mycroft knew the answer to his brother’s protests – but then, so did Sherlock. Yes, biology could be overcome through sheer willpower – to a certain extent. If Sherlock had been a Beta or even a normal baseline Human or, God forbid, one of the rare male Omegas, he could most likely go indefinitely ignoring his body’s needs. He could continue to eat only every few days, sleep even less, and forgo sex altogether. However, he wasn’t any of those other types of Humanity, he was an Alpha. And as an Alpha there was a great deal his body required despite the mind’s demands.

He needed to eat regularly, or else his metabolism went haywire. One low blood-sugar coma in late adolescence had been enough to convince Sherlock of that. He needed to sleep every forty-eight hours at a minimum, or else his senses – even his keen sense of smell, so valuable to an Alpha – became affected.

As for sex…well. The hormones secreted by an in-Heat Omega helped to balance out a great deal of the aggressiveness and restlessness that was part of an Alpha’s nature. And for one as highly strung as his brother, avoiding sex was tantamount to a sort of intellectual suicide. He put it that way, quite bluntly, reminding his brother that the one thing he valued most about himself – his sharp mind – was at risk if he didn’t do something. “Drugs will only short-circuit your needs for so long, little brother,” he said, making it clear that he understood exactly how Sherlock had been attempting to avoid physical intimacy with an Omega for the past two years. “Eventually the dependency you’re fostering will do as much damage to your mind as avoiding sex.”

Sherlock, who had been lounging on the chair next to his brother’s in the front parlor of the Holmes family estate, rose abruptly to his feet and stalked out of the room. Mycroft sighed and passed a hand over his eyes. Did Sherlock honestly expect him not to notice his drug use? Even though he wore long sleeves and avoided the outdoors as much as he’d embraced it as a child, the pallor and dark smudges under his eyes, the excess jitteriness he exhibited, all told as much to Mycroft’s keen mind as did the scent that now clung to Sherlock’s body. 

He just hoped it was a stage, experimentation his brother would quickly grow out of, grow bored with – or deduce for himself how damaging it could be to his mind. Well, perhaps not that last, Mycroft reluctantly concluded, or else he’d have already given up the damned habit. Which was just another piece of evidence cementing Mycroft’s observations, actually; his brother needed to get laid, in the vernacular, or he would continue to fall apart until there was nothing left to him.

Their father’s death the year before hadn’t helped. Their mother’s slow descent into melancholy – clinical depression, they’d call it if she weren’t an Omega who’d lost her Bonded Lifemate – was just another nail in his brother’s intellectual coffin, as it were. Both events were affecting Mycroft as well, but his own Bondmate had helped stabilize him, keep him grounded.

Even if Sherlock wasn’t quite ready for that step, he needed to at least consider the idea of regularly visiting a House of Heat in order to help stabilize his own biology, to reach an emotional equilibrium he quite possibly had never felt. Didn’t he recognize the difference in himself between now and when he was shagging the occasional Omega during his two years at Harvard?

Of course, those women had been illicitly provided to the male Alphas rather than belonging to a certified, regulated and government-endorsed House. The equivalent, Mycroft was given to understand, of a Beta or regular Human male seeking out a streetwalker rather than going to a government-run bordello. He understood the adrenalin rush of doing something relatively dangerous, but Sherlock was no longer an adolescent or a student; he’d begun to form some kind of ties to New Scotland Yard and was utilizing his considerable intellect in assisting some of the detectives there in solving their cases.

If he didn’t do something about his growing hormonal imbalances, that could be jeopardized as well. Mycroft hoped Sherlock would come to that conclusion on his own, and not need to have it pointed out to him. His younger brother was painfully sensitive to having faults in his thinking pointed out to him.

Mycroft sighed and rose to his feet. All this tedious emotionalism was making him restless; he felt the need for Petra’s soothing presence to calm him down. Sherlock, he decided as he headed up the stairs to the rooms he and his Bondmate shared, would have to work things out himself. Mycroft had done as much as he could to help the stubborn git.

oOo

Bloody Mycroft and his bloody, stupid, interfering ways. Sherlock snarled as he paced rapidly back and forth in his bedroom, the scowl on his face fierce enough to frighten anyone away. Not that anyone would challenge him, here in the family home. Certainly not now that their father had gone and gotten himself embroiled in some ridiculous _affaire du Coeur_ leading to his death at the hands of an enraged Alpha. Even though the Omega in question hadn’t been the other Alpha’s Bondmate, she’d certainly been his property. Father should have known better; after all, he’d been regularly unfaithful to their mother ever since her inability to bear more children had been revealed.

That, Sherlock knew, was when it had begun. When his carefully ordered world had fallen apart. Mycroft had been away at school, his second year at Eton, when the doctors had given their parents the news.

Sherlock, of course, hadn’t been meant to overhear any of it; he’d been out in the gardens with his nanny, a placid Beta named Eve, but had scampered away from her and hidden in the hedge maze. She was still looking for him there when he gleefully snuck back into the house, intent on raiding the kitchen for a treat when his parents’ raised voices had caught his attention.

It wasn’t unusual to hear Father shouting at something or other that had enraged him, but to hear Mummy’s voice raised in anger was an entirely different matter. So he’d snuck over to the front parlor, stopping at the door and listening with wide-eyed attention as the argument escalated.

“We’re Bondmates, Giles,” his mother was shouting, the clear sound of tears in her voice. “Did you think I’d not know how you felt? How you still feel? For God’s sake, it’s not my fault! You heard Dr. Sigerson – it’s some genetic defect, rare but not unheard of. Why do you persist in acting like I did it on purpose? Don’t you think I wanted more children?”

She’d broken down in sobs at that point. Sherlock couldn’t help it; he’d rushed into the room, unable to stand the sound of his mother so sad, only to meet his father’s furious eyes. “Get out, Sherlock, this doesn’t concern you!” he’d all but shouted at his youngest son.

The Alpha in Sherlock, still forming but backed by a strength of will far beyond his eight years, refused to back down. Instead of leaving, he’d gone defiantly to his mother’s side – she was sitting on the sofa, rocking back and forth, hands over her face as she continued to cry – and put his arms around her. “You get out,” he’d snarled, voice pitched high with his own anger. “You made Mummy cry, not me!”

He and his father had locked gazes; just as Sherlock was about to lower his eyes and admit defeat, his father had, miraculously, thrown his hands up and stormed out of the room.

Mummy had cried for a long, long time after his father left them alone, clutching Sherlock to her as if he were the only thing anchoring her to the world. When she’d cried herself out, she seemed to realize that her son, still so young, was comforting her when it had always been the other way round. She’d managed a smile, kissed him on the tip of his nose and sent him back out to the hedge maze once he admitted that was where Eve was looking for him. “Don’t worry her, Sherlock, it isn’t nice,” his mother had remonstrated. “And thank you for letting me cry all over you, darling. But Mummy’s much better now.”

She hadn’t been; Sherlock had known that even if he still didn’t understand all the nuances of the fight between his parents.

But he recognized them now, in spite of his deliberate attempts to distance himself from emotions and sentiment all the distasteful fallout they left in their wake. He knew so much more now than he had when he’d first demanded answers from Mycroft, when he’d been six and so outraged by the fact that his parents weren’t legally allowed to marry.

Not that it would have made a difference, he snorted disdainfully. Lifebonding was supposed to be forever, a link between mind and heart, but even that had proven fleeting, transient, when one half of the Bonded pair proved to be inadequate to the needs of the other half.

He didn’t blame his mother; how could he? She’d been right, after all. A genetic defect that hadn’t been detected – even though all Omegas considered for Bonding with members of the elite went through rigorous genetic testing before being placed, such tests were far from perfect – was the fault of the testing, not of the person being tested. That their father had been unable to hide his rejection of their mother due to the bond they shared only put the blame more firmly on him, in Sherlock’s mind.

Lifebonding. The mere thought of putting himself through that kind of hell made Sherlock’s blood run cold. How could Mycroft put himself into such a position, after witnessing firsthand the fact that it didn’t guarantee anything? Not happiness, not faithfulness…nothing. Lifebonding was supposed to be more permanent than marriage, more binding, but in the end they both proved to be nothing but illusions. 

Illusions he would never subject himself to. Yes, he was willing to admit (grudgingly) that Mycroft was probably right about the necessity of Knotting the occasional Omega just to relieve his body of the stresses of simply being an Alpha male, but as for taking one as a Bondmate…No. Never.

Besides, taking a Bondmate, even in this day and age, was still tantamount to taking on ownership of another Human being, which his intellect and much-hated emotions both rebelled against. If Omegas were allowed to vote, to marry, to go out in public without either their mate or a designated chaperone/bodyguard accompanying them, then he supposed he wouldn’t feel as strongly about it. However, the world was the way it was, and there was damned little one person could do to change it.

Especially if one’s elder brother was part of the government that condoned keeping roughly a fifth of the population in virtual slavery.

He ran over the pertinent facts in his mind, although he refused to admit that he was relieved to be thinking about something other than his personal situation for a few minutes.

There were far more “normal” Humans than Alphas, Betas, or Omegas. Betas outnumbered Alphas roughly three to one, and Omegas were an even scarcer percentage of the population. So scarce, in fact, that the current laws, which had been in place since the Victorian era, actually were designed to protect them, even while serving in actuality to keep them even more circumscribed than orthodox Muslim females in the Middle East.

Omegas had been traded about, sold, forced into near-constant heat cycles by the ruthless Alphas who controlled them, for centuries. The laws forbidding them to legally marry were old, so old that they’d hardened into unbreakable tradition, but the newer laws at least kept them from literal slavery. Unbonded females from the age of fifteen or after their first Heat (some Omega females were fortunate enough not to endure that particular biological torment until their early twenties) were removed from their homes and brought together in state-sponsored dormitories. Once ensconced there, they were thoroughly instructed on the lives they were expected to live – brainwashing, pure and simple, in Sherlock’s mind – and how they were expected to cater to the Alphas they encountered from that point forward. They were instructed on childbirth, drilled on their duty to produce as many children as possible (although why that particular need was emphasized, given the world’s current state of overpopulation, had always been and probably would always remain a mystery to him), and essentially turned into geishas who were taught to put their own needs far behind those of their potential mates.

And that, Sherlock knew from his research (he’d been fascinated and repelled by the world Omegas were forced to inhabit ever since his attempts to make Mycroft explain things to him when he’d been six and far too young, he admitted now, to understand) was just the life for the Omegas destined to become Bondmates to elite, upper class Alphas. The life his mother had endured, once upon a time. The Omegas who weren’t deemed worthy of that type of life for genetic or societal reasons based on their race or age of first Heat and many, many other variables – some logical and some purely prejudicial – led far less comfortable lives. Yes, sexual slavery for Omegas was officially ended, but what had replaced it was no less sickening.

Houses of Heat, as they were commonly called, were no better than brothels in Sherlock’s mind. Yes, both were legal and run mostly by the government, but both came down to the same thing: Women selling their bodies to multiple men for strictly sexual purposes. Yes, the official line on Houses of Heat was that they were to ensure that all Alphas had the chance to Knot an Omega and therefore keep their innate aggressiveness somewhat in check; yes, they were supposed to be available for Lifebonding and child bearing, but the truth was somewhat less than ideal.

Research Sherlock had conducted – clandestine research, since the government, worldwide and not just in Britain, flatly refused to allow statistics to be gathered in this area except by their own people – proved conclusively, at least to his mind, that Omegas for the lower class produced far less offspring than the government claimed. There were fewer Lifebonds as well, and not just because of the disparity between numbers of available Alpha males and numbers of available Omega females.

It was nothing less than an outrage – and one Sherlock had found he was absolutely unable to interest more than a handful of people in discussing. His friend in London, John Watson, was one of those few. DI Lestrade of New Scotland Yard was another. It was somewhat of a relief, being able to discuss his frustrations with the two other men – one a middle-class Beta and one an equally middle-class Alpha with a Beta wife who couldn’t be faithful if her life depended on it, although Lestrade certainly had no interest in Sherlock ever pointing that out to him again – but still frustrating since neither of them had any more of an idea how to change things than he did.

He sighed and stopped pacing, throwing himself into one of the armchairs flanking his room’s fireplace, staring moodily into the dancing flames. This absolute inability to change anything about his society in this one aspect was one of the other reasons he shied away from sentiment. If he could do nothing to ease the plight of Britain’s Omegas – many of whom, he knew, would violently disagree with his labeling of them as downtrodden – then what was the use of feeling much of anything? Oh, friendship was, he’d reluctantly learned, something quite a bit more valuable than he’d believed it to be, especially since he’d met John, but love? Romance? Ridiculous. Pointless. 

Which left only sex. His brother, of course, had been smart enough not to try and press Sherlock into seeking out a Bondmate, only in relieving himself sexually. And at least the Houses of Heat that would be available to him as an upper class Alpha would be the types to care for their Omegas meticulously. They would be somewhat educated, sophisticated, beautiful, impeccably groomed…and deadly dull. Boring as dishwater outside of their Heat cycles.

But then, since he had no desire to Bond, what did it matter? In fact, he thought recklessly as he jumped back to his feet, what the hell did any of it matter? The world was what the world was, and there was nothing he could do about it. So why not just give in and do as his brother advised? A good fuck wouldn’t solve everything, but it would definitely help with his restless aggressiveness.

“Fuck it,” he said aloud, heading for his bed and pulling his suitcase from beneath it. He slammed it down on the dark blue comforter, opened it and began throwing the clothes he’d brought with him for the weekend back into it, even though he’d just arrived a few hours ago. Once he made up his mind, he immediately followed through. Mummy would be disappointed, of course, but he’d been disappointing her ever since dropping out of Harvard; why change things now? Especially since there was absolutely nothing he could do to bring her out of her depression. Nothing short of his father’s miraculous return to life could help an Omega who’d lost her Bondmate – even if said Bondmate hadn’t been a physical part of her life for years.


	3. Boil

**The Present**

Sherlock sighed and took another drag on his cigarette, one leg elegantly crossed over the other, foot jiggling with impatience. He’d arrived early for his appointment at John Watson’s urging. The other man had recently returned to London after being invalided out of the army and had immediately looked up his old friend. They’d become flatmates and had settled into a comfortable routine; John had proven invaluable as an assistant on the cases Sherlock now worked for Lestrade and other DI’s at New Scotland Yard but simply could not stand how Sherlock got when he’d gone too long without seeking the services of an Omega.

Things had changed a bit in the past nineteen years, although not as much as could be hoped. Omegas were still as much chattel as they had been, but research had improved their lives immensely. Heats could be suppressed during the first ten years of their lives if their body chemistry was compatible with the drugs, so many Omegas were able to remain with their families until adulthood, at which point, heat suppressants or not, they were still obliged to remove themselves from society at large, the excuse being that the drugs were known to fail completely if an Omega using them were exposed to a multitude of Alpha males, especially under non-controlled situations. Birth control for Omegas had been developed as well, so that Knotting was no longer the practical guarantee of conception that it had once been.

The female Omegas – males had never endured the societal prejudices their female counterparts endured, especially since they were incapable of conceiving or falling into Heat – had earned a few freedoms as well. They were allowed to vote and hold certain careers outside the home, under very strict circumstances. There was one Omega who taught at an all-girl’s school now, for instance, although only after she’d undergone an emergency hysterectomy when she was discovered to have uterine cancer after her first – and only – pregnancy. That was after uni became available for Omegas in the late 1990s – an all girl’s school, of course, with access for Alpha’s rigorously regulated and limited to female Alphas only.

And of course it went without saying that all those changes – except for voting, of course – applied only to the upper class Omegas. The rest were essentially trapped in the same existence they’d endured for centuries. At the mercy of the government and the Alphas who were allowed access to them during their Heats. And, if an ugly rumor he’d heard recently was to be believed, even if their Heats were suppressed or they were off-cycle.

He’d given up on the entire idea of helping Omegas not long after John Watson had decided to join the army as a way to pay for medical school. His mother’s slow descent into madness had, rather than spurring him to action, thoroughly destroyed any ambitions in that direction. It was too late to help her; why bother helping anyone else, especially females in whom he had no emotional investment? Even the intellectual challenge was too mundane, he told himself, to bother. Without a radical change in the foundation of the world itself – hell, even in the United States the Omegas were treated as second-class citizens at best, and they’d been allowed to vote in that country since the late 1980s – there was still nothing a single man or even a small but dedicated group of people could do.

Such groups existed, of course. Just as there were people who banded together to decry the inhumane treatment of house pets and whales and children in third-world countries, there were groups dedicated to trying to ease the plight of Omegas, in this country and others.

All were about as effective as a terrier yapping at the postman; unless the gate was opened, the postman simply ignored the yapping and went about his business. Unless someone in power – mostly Alphas, mostly males – was interested in the cause, nothing would ever change.

Even his brother Mycroft had proven a disappointment in that manner, as in so many other ways. He’d grown into a pompous git, more interested in retaining his own power than in helping the people of England. He claimed to have a “minor” post in the British government, but Sherlock knew that was so much hogwash. The man practically was the British government, so adept he’d proven himself at stirring the right pots and bringing the right plans to boil – or leaving them simmering, to continue the metaphor, until the exact right time to remove them from the stove and watch complacently as they came about exactly as he wanted them to.

They hadn’t spoken in years, not since the trying night they’d been forced to concede defeat in their attempts to keep their mother anchored by even the slightest bit to reality. The night they’d shouted at one another, throwing blame and casting accusations until they’d eventually stormed off to their rooms, two Alphas incapable of coming to an agreement about the one woman in their lives who meant anything to them – well, yes, Mycroft had Petra but as far as Sherlock could tell, his brother had about as much affection for her as he did the servants. At least he seemed to be a good father to his two sons, much better than their own father had managed even before his wife’s infertility drove him to live elsewhere.

Mummy had the best of care now, but Sherlock and Mycroft were careful to avoid one another as much as possible, scheduling their visits so they never overlapped or coincided, even though Mycroft’s family spent nearly as much time at the Holmes estate as they did in London.

Sherlock didn’t mind seeing Petra and the two boys, but he didn’t go out of his way to see them, either. Petra was a perfect Omega, always deferring to him as if he was her Bondmate, catering to his needs…it was sometimes annoying and sometimes rather comforting, although he hated to admit it. And the boys were fairly well behaved, or at least as well behaved as two pre-teens with boundless energy could be.

In fact, if he were ever to entertain the idea of having children himself one day, it would be because of his nephews. Patrick and Stewart were his secret vice, now that he’d given up drugs; he limited his visits precisely because of how attached he was to them. Sentiment again; how he loathed it. Still, it was good to know that the bloodline would continue, even if he weren’t the one to carry it on.

Something buried very deeply inside his soul stirred and grumbled whenever he reaffirmed his private decision never to burden the world with his offspring, but he’d grown adept at ignoring it and continued to do so even as he waited to indulge in the actions that could lead to procreation if he were so inclined.

He was fully aware of the irony and ignored it as well. Children had no place in his life, just as a Bondmate had no place in his life.

Both of those beliefs were destined to come back to bit him on the arse far sooner than he could have predicted.

oOo

Molly sighed. Then, having nothing better to do, she sighed again. God, she was so freaking bored, it was driving her crazy. Being outed as an Omega and forced away from her family when she’d been so close to finishing her undergraduate degree had been frustrating and humiliating, but the life she was expected to live now…she didn’t understand why more Omegas didn’t slit their wrists and be done with it.

God knew she’d thought about it often enough over the past two years. Two years of not only being forced into seclusion from the outside world – her rights even more restricted than those of other Omegas, due to her and her family’s attempt to pass her off as a Beta – but being forbidden to continue her studies, even though online courses were available, was sheer, unadulterated torture. The limited websites she was allowed to visit were little reprieve, given that they either dealt with childrearing, childbirth, homemaking – or porn. In case an Omega got the idea that their lives were meant to consist of anything else.

She hadn’t even been given the temporary relief the other Omegas received from their Heat cycles, hadn’t been offered up to some random Alpha to be Knotted even though her cycles hadn’t been suppressed. Additional punishment, she supposed, although no one would admit to it, for being on illegal suppressants from the age of fourteen until she’d been scooped up and carried away from her dorm at Oxford two days before her nineteenth birthday. Those quarterly occurrences were complete and utter agony; even masturbating only offered short-term relief, and then only at the beginning of the cycle. At its peak she was little more than an animal desperately whimpering for relief that came only after her body returned, reluctantly it always seemed, to normal.

Those days she was kept in a different room, far from the public areas of the House. Some days she wished they'd keep her there entirely; the sound of life going about its merry way outside her locked bedroom door was a torture all its own, especially when she caught the occasional scent of an Alpha male going by – to someone else's rooms.

Not that she was dying to just give herself over to the first Alpha she saw – excepting, of course, during her Heats, when she would gladly give herself to EVERY Alpha she saw – but it would be something different. At least her life would have a purpose, unlike now.

The only thing that kept her from actually taking her own life was the hope that things would someday change for the better. After all, her enforced seclusion couldn’t last forever; Omegas were a valuable resource, weren’t they? A scarce one at that; her research (before she’d been found out, of course) had shown that there were nowhere near enough Omegas available for the growing Alpha population. 

She also knew enough from the limited facts she’d been able to find regarding Omega living conditions to recognize that she hadn’t been plopped down into some low-level, government-run House of Heat as she’d expected to be her fate. No, this place was far too well run, too well protected and luxurious to be anything but a residence for Omegas destined to become the Bondmates or at least playthings of the upper crust Alphas who ruled the damned planet, always had and apparently always would.

She felt the familiar slow simmer of anger rising from deep within her gut, but did nothing to try and tamp it down. Dammit, she was a Human being; just because her biology put her into a very special subsection of humanity didn’t make her any less of person. She still had a brain; so what if four times a year (now that they’d forcibly taken her off the suppressants) she basically turned into a rutting animal whose scent was designed to attract Alphas? Their own thinking processes basically turned to mush once they were exposed to an Omega in Heat’s scent and pheromones, so why were they allowed to not only live whatever life they chose for themselves, but to actually be in charge of things?

Regular Humans, in her opinion, were the least volatile, the most reliable and steady, the least dependent on biology; why not give them a chance to run things? They couldn’t do any worse than the Alpha’s had.

Then again, thinking back to some of the rather hurtful comments Molly had heard about Omegas over the years from people thinking she was a Beta (impossible to disguise her as a normal Human, difficult enough to make people think she was a Beta but the illegally-obtained suppressants had helped), maybe not. Maybe nothing would change unless Omegas themselves were somehow able to rise above their biology and demand to be heard.

She snorted at that fancy; fat chance of any such thing ever occurring. Even if the Omegas she’d been allowed to mingle with now and then had any such rebellious thoughts in their minds, the rest of the world (with very few exceptions) seemed poised to slap them right back down again. 

“It’s too dangerous, Molly,” she said aloud, voice high and mincing in a savage mimicry of the earnest young Beta therapist who’d been assigned to her upon her arrival. “History is full of cautionary tales about Omegas who caused riots by going into Heat when in public, or families slaughtering one another over Alpha sons raping Omega daughters, surely you wouldn’t want to return to such savage times!”

Savage times sounded like a much more interesting life than the one she was currently leading; besides, the examples Dr. what’s-her-name was citing were all from well before the Age of Enlightenment. And the medical advances in the 21st century had grown by leaps and bounds; surely that counted for something.

She even knew from personal experience that Omegas could go about in normal society without causing any of the problems that were so often cited as reasons to keep them separate from the rest of the world. Unfortunately that personal experience was also illegal; there hadn’t even been a trial or anything, just her being awoken in the middle of the night to flashing lights and handcuffs and being injected with a sedative and waking up here. Wherever “here” was; she still had no clear idea of where she’d ended up, just that it was in a posh location just outside of London.

She’d figured out that her roommate must have realized she was actually an Omega and ratted her out to the Dean; the only other person she’d lived so closely with had been her Beta parents. Just her luck to have an especially keen-nosed Alpha bitch to bunk with. If she’d realized Irene harbored any suspicions she’d have packed her bags and run for home as quickly as she could, but the other girl had kept her thoughts to herself. But Molly had seen the smirk on the other girl’s face as she was being dragged out of the dorm room, not quite unconscious. It had been a rather triumphant expression, and one that Molly would never forget.

It was the first time she’d ever felt hatred toward a specific person in her life. She didn’t like the feeling, but since her emotions were pretty much the only thing she was allowed to own these days, she held onto it as carefully as she held on to her love for her parents.

She hadn’t been allowed to see them after she’d been brought here, had no idea of what had happened to them no matter how much she begged to be told of their fates. Had they ended up in prison? She had no idea what kind of punishment would be meted out to people who hid their child’s biological identity as hers had, since she’d never heard of anyone getting away with it as long as they had.

A knock on her door brought her out of her thoughts and she hurried to her feet, carefully clasping her hands in front of her and lowering her eyes. Whoever it was, she’d been trained not to meet their eyes unless directly informed she was allowed to.

It wasn’t time for another one of her “therapy” sessions (she preferred to call them what they were: brainwashing sessions), it wasn’t time for a meal…maybe she was going to be allowed to mingle with some of the other Omegas again? Her heart sped up at the thought of contact with other people, people facing the same prejudices and problems she did, even if they didn’t seem to feel as strongly about their situation as she did. The therapist had told Molly at their last session that such interactions were going to increase on a probationary basis, as long as she continued to “improve.”

Right. “Improve.” As if not wanting to be a slave to her biology was an illness to be overcome rather than a point of pride. Sometimes she hated that woman almost as much as she hated Irene fucking Adler.

Still. It would only hurt her chances of living some kind of semi-normal life if she continued to outwardly show her true feelings on the matter, so she’d learned to parrot the response she was expected to give and pretend that she understood completely why she was being treated like a criminal for doing nothing more than living her life the way everyone else was allowed to.

The door opened, and she kept her eyes firmly on her clasped hands as she deduced the other person’s identity by the sound of their shoes on the polished hardwood floor. High heels, but not the nervous tap-tapping that heralded her therapist’s arrival; that woman always wore high heels but walked in them like she expected to trip and fall at any moment. No, this was a pair of feet she didn’t recognize, not at first. Not until she stole a glance from the corner of her eye and saw the expensive, vivid blue pair of Manolo Blahnik patent-leather shoes and sheer silk stockings covering the legs of…

“Molly. Look at me.”

She looked up slowly, feeling her excited hearbeats transform into panicky thumps. It was Madame LeFoy, the woman who ran this luxurious hell-hole. The Warden, Molly secretly termed the Frenchwoman, although her official title was simply “Manager.”

“Madame LeFoy,” she acknowledged, doing her best to keep her voice even and not stutter the way she tended to do when she was nervous. She hadn’t seen the other woman in close to a year, since her last “evaluation”, the one where her therapist recommended that Molly continue to be kept from close contact with other Omegas as her unorthodox views might prove “bothersome” to the other women who resided here.

She refrained from questioning the older woman, however, knowing from painful past experience that Madame was capable of some very subtle cruelties, none of which Molly knew to be sanctioned by law. However, she’d quickly discovered that Madame was a law unto herself in this particular House, another reason she’d learned to at least outwardly bow to the conventions and present herself as an unBonded Omega was supposed to.

“We have an unusual situation on our hands, Molly,” she said in her crisp, barely accented English. “Someone has requested a mature but untried Omega.”

Molly felt her mouth go dry as her fear ratcheted itself up a notch. “Untried” meant “Virgin” which she certainly was…but it also meant she was possibly about to find herself shoved into a room with some sweaty, overheated Alpha male with an excess of hormones and a need to dominate in the most primal manner possible. The ones who specified virgins usually were. She'd long believed it a good thing that she'd escaped being Knotted as a teenager, but now...

“I thought I was going to be…I mean, don’t I have to right to refuse?” she asked desperately. “My therapist said…”

Madame raised a hand and waved it dismissively. “What Dr. Jamison has to say is irrelevant. It’s clear to me and has been all along that you will never fit the mold of a properly submissive Omega, Molly. We received you far too late, thanks to your parents’ meddling.” Disapproval was clear in her cold voice and the hardened expression on her face. “The only reason you were accepted here at all was because you were clearly quite intelligent, anomalously so for an Omega, and intelligence – to a certain extent – is valuable to some of our clients who require a Bondmate that actually think for herself.”

It was just as clear that Madame herself found such things unnecessary, and if Molly’s intellect was what had landed her here, then why had she spent the last two years with no reading materials but revolting romance novels and the occasional child care guide?

She almost blurted that very question out, but kept her mouth shut as Madame gave her a sharp, unfriendly glance. “Your punishment period expired six months ago,” she revealed, smiling slightly – a cold smile, verging on cruel – as Molly started in surprise. “However, we both know you will never make a proper Bondmate, Molly. Your parents ruined your future by deluding you into believing you could live your life outside of society’s accepted parameters.” She sneered as she added: “All you’re good for now is to be fucked whenever an Alpha decides he wants you. After this first assignation, you’ll be transferred to a different facility. One more suited to your proclivities.”

Molly was stunned. Yes, she’d known she was being punished, but she’d still believed she held some kind of value or she’d never have been brought here in the first place. This time, the questions would not stay contained; she’d already been told she was sentenced to a lifetime of sexual servitude, what did it matter if Madame became angry at her? “Then why bring me here in the first place?” she demanded, her hands balling into fists at her side as she turned so she and the older woman were directly facing one another. “Why put me through two years of mind-numbing boredom, forcing me to go through my Heats with no relief, if you were just going to throw me out to a life of forced prostitution in the end?”

Madame’s expression became even colder, if possible. “Do not shout at me, Molly Hooper,” she hissed, eyes flashing dangerously. “You forget your place – in fact, you constantly forget your place, which is why you can no longer be housed here. You were brought here because a certain benefactor – one who found his own Bondmate here and has considerable influence with the British government – felt that you might be suited for a better life than you would face if you were simply given over to a lesser House. But he has recently been promoted to a position of greater importance, and is no longer as involved in our internal affairs as he once was. Leaving you, I’m afraid, far down on his list of priorities. If he even remembers he had you sent here at all,” she added spitefully.

Now Molly was really confused – confused and angry and recklessly unafraid of any consequences she might face as her temper, long held in check, finally erupted. “You’re saying someone had me placed here, and now you’ve decided to get rid of me just because he’s too busy to check in on me anymore? You bitch!”

Thwack! Molly’s cheek burned at the force of the slap Madame landed on her, and that was the straw. The one that broke the camel’s back, that destroyed Molly’s last vestige of control. She screamed and launched herself at the other woman, hands clawing for her face as they collapsed to the floor.

oOo

Sherlock was being led down the hall to his appointment – a sleek young woman whom he’d Knotted once before, Sabrina or Sabine, something like that – when the sound of two women shrieking from behind the door he was about to pass caught his attention. Omega’s in the middle of a Heat cycle often screamed, but there were definitely two voices involved, both female, and the definite sound of a physical altercation coming from behind that closed door.

His escort, a young woman he hadn’t seen before, hesitated as if unsure how to proceed, so he took the decision out of her hands by yanking open the door in question and observing the situation for himself.

“Oh, Mr. Holmes, you’re not allowed…” she started to protest, but he ignored her completely as he realized what sort of a situation he’d stumbled into.

Madame LeFoy, the managress, was rolling around on the floor, trying to fight off the attack of an enraged young Omega. Both women were screaming at the top of their lungs, and Madame, if he didn’t intervene, seemed likely to lose large swathes of her hair, if not an eye, judging by the bloodthirsty look on the Omega’s face as she clawed at her.

It was such an unexpected sight – who’d ever heard of an Omega not in Heat losing their temper and attacking another person, especially an Alpha? – that it took him a few seconds to decide on the proper course of action. His escort had peered over his shoulder and taken off at a run, presumably to fetch security; he heard other doors opening as curious Omegas poked their heads out of their rooms to see what was going on, but ignored everything but the two women locked in combat in front of him.

He stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind him. It locked only from the outside, he’d already noted, which meant this woman was a special case. However, she hadn’t been completely isolated from the outside world, or else her rooms would lie down a different corridor than this one. She was no new arrival; the room had been occupied for at least a year, possibly two. She wasn’t in Heat, no scent of that on the air, just enraged Omega and frightened Alpha, a combination of scents he’d never expected to be subjected to.

Time to intervene. The Omega was on top, had raised an arm and was in the process of striking Madame when he pounced, pulling her up to her feet and trapping her arms by her side as he encircled her body with his own arms. “Let me go!” she screamed, fighting him; another first, an amazing first for an Omega to continue to fight against an Alpha male who was clearly superior to her physically. 

Madame had used the respite to bring herself to her knees and from there to her feet, staggering just a little as she slid her foot back into the shoe that had been knocked off her at some point during the altercation. She glared at the woman Sherlock held in his arms, wiping at the blood dripping down her cheek from the set of scratches the Omega had given her. “Thank you, Mr. Holmes,” she said, her voice a ragged echo of its normally cultured tones. “Security will take her off your hands shortly.”

The sound of heavy feet pounding up the corridor confirmed her words, but he refused to release his hold on the still-struggling girl even as the door was flung open. Keeping his eyes on Madame, he said: “What did you do to provoke her into such a show of temper, Madame? Because we both know that Omegas aren’t normally prone to this kind of behavior.”

He kept his voice at a normal tone, and gradually the woman’s shrieks and demands to be let go faded into hiccupping sobs. She went limp all of a sudden, but he’d been waiting for just such a moment and successfully kept her from collapsing to the floor, catching her in his grip and swinging her up into his arms, her head coming to rest on his shoulder as she passed into unconsciousness.

When the guard – a Beta – tried to take her from him however, he growled and backed up a step, swinging her away from the man's reaching arms. He looked to Madame LeFoy for direction, but Sherlock interrupted her before she could say anything. “Leave us, Madame. I wish to speak to this young woman when she regains consciousness, and I doubt very much I'll be able to do so if you and your thug remain in the room.”

Madame's face flushed an ugly shade of red; interesting, she never allowed herself to be anything but completely professional in a client's presence. Presumably this altercation had rattled her deeply enough that she thought she could countermand a superior Alpha's orders. Which was precisely what he'd done, he realized; he'd ordered her to leave, when this was her House and he was, indeed, only a client. One who'd never expressed an interest in finding a Bondmate in spite of the fact that that was what this house specialized in.

He glanced down at the unconscious woman in his arms; what was it about her that had aroused such a fierce protectiveness in him? True, he'd never encountered such an unorthodox situation before, but he recognized that the correct thing to do – what any other Alpha was likely do under the same circumstances – was to surrender the Omega to the guard, allow Madame to deal with her as she saw fit and no doubt had experience in doing, and allow himself to continue on with his own, entirely unconnected business.

Sherlock Holmes, however, had always prided himself on not necessarily doing what society deemed “correct,” just as he'd always prided himself on not being the typical Alpha male. Yes, he'd been forced to acknowledge a certain obligation to his biological make-up, but his mind was still firmly in charge of his body nine-tenths of the time.

Including this time. There was something very intriguing about the woman he was holding so effortlessly in his arms – she couldn't weigh more than 110 pounds if that – and the situation he'd inadvertently walked into.

A situation, he deduced with no effort at all, that Madame LeFoy would much rather he hadn't witnessed.

“Mr. Holmes,” she said, her smooth voice an attempt to belie her angry, red face. “I don't think you understand what 'as 'appened here.” Her aitches were disappearing, another sign of her extreme agitation. “Miss Hooper is a criminal...”

“An Omega criminal?” he cut in, eyebrow raised as his curiosity was further piqued. If she'd thought to put him off by those words, she was sorely mistaken. “How intriguing. I insist on speaking to her alone, Madame. Unless you're concerned for my safety? Is she a murderer of some sort? A dangerous martial arts expert? Poisonous fingernails, perhaps?”

His sarcasm was not lost on her; bowing to the inevitable, Madame snapped at the guard to leave the room...but to remain outside the door. “Mr. Holmes, you may speak to her but when you are finished, I must insist that you leave...and perhaps find another House better suited to your needs. Henderson will let you out when you have finished.” Then she turned crisply on her heel and exited the room, closing the door firmly behind her. And locking it.

Sherlock wasted no time in laying “Miss Hooper” on her bed, arranging her comfortably before dragging the room's single chair over to her side. He found a plastic cup in the bathroom, still in a protective paper seal as if this were a hotel instead of a poorly-disguised bordello, unwrapped it and filled it two-thirds of the way with cold water. He returned to the bedroom, placed it on the bedside table, and waited.

oOo

Molly groaned and blinked her eyes. God, her head hurt; what had happened...Oh. God. She'd attacked the Manager – Warden LeFoy, she mentally corrected herself – and then someone had come into the room and grabbed her...

She sat up and stared as a deep baritone voice broke into her confused and troubled thoughts. “Do be careful, Miss Hooper. You're a bit banged up and I imagine your head is pounding.”

There was a man sitting by her bed – on her chair. He was holding a cup of water in one hand and two small white pills in the palm of the other. Both hands were extended in her direction, and she took the proffered water and (she hoped) paracetamol automatically, while her eyes studied him.

Was this the man she'd been promised to, the Alpha who wanted an untried Omega? A “mature” untried Omega?

Somehow she didn't think so, and that helped her to relax a bit as she swallowed the pills he'd given her and drank thirstily from the cup of cool water. When she'd drained it he extended his hand again; she gave it to him, watching incredulously as he rose to his feet – gracefully, he seemed to move with an innate grace that she envied – and headed for her small bathroom. She heard the water running and grew even more incredulous. An Alpha, catering to an Omega who wasn't deep in Heat or recovering from same? What crazy world had she woken up in? Her eyes darted around the room, assessing; no, it was her room, all right, the one she occupied when not in a Heat cycle. The only sign of the fight she'd had with Warden LeFoy was the rumpled-up area rug, and a few drops of blood. Not hers, she noted with satisfaction as she recalled scratching the other woman's face.

She studied her fingernails, quickly lowering them when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching from the bathroom. The mystery Alpha was back; he silently handed her the cup of water, then folded himself into her chair, crossing one leg over his knee, resting his forearms on the arms of the chair and holding his hands in front of his face, steepling his fingers and studying her over their tips. “Madame LeFoy informs me you are a criminal,” he said, speaking without preamble. “As you are an Omega, and in spite of the physical altercation I walked in on earlier, I deduce you attempted to hide your status somehow, no doubt through the application of illegally-obtained Heat suppressants and Beta-brand toiletries, to further mask your natural scent.”

He sniffed delicately before adding: “Which appears to be a combination of lilac and honey with just a trace of vinegar. Intriguing.”

She stared at him, not bothering with any of her painfully-learned training. She'd never met anyone quite like him, even in their limited exposure to one another, of that she was quite certain. He was pure Alpha; his own scent was overlain with no colognes or aftershaves, which meant all she could smell was him. Pure, musky male, hints of sandalwood and something smoky that made her mouth water.

Damn, it figured the first Alpha she'd ever me who actually made her glad to be an Omega would be some kind of interrogator or enforcer for Warden Bitch-face.

Something of her feelings must have shown on her face, because he leaned forward with a slight frown and said: “I am not an employee of the House, Miss Hooper. Nor am I directly involved in law enforcement. You may rest assured that I am not here to punish you or arrest you – although to be honest,” he added with a sudden smile that utterly charmed her, “it would be most stimulating to be the first person to ever bring an Omega to New Scotland Yard for questioning.”

She laughed at that, actually laughed with true humor for the first time years, then crossed her legs under her in a most unladylike fashion and continued her unabashed staring at him. “You figured out what kind of a criminal I am, and defined my scent as well as my own parents could have,” she said after a moment spent taking in the physical details of his appearance and filing them away for future deducing of her own. “What else can you tell me about myself? Or do you just want me to fill in the blanks on my own?”

“You've not been in contact with your parents since your arrival here,” he replied promptly, seeming to study her as closely as she was examining him. “You hesitated just the slightest bit when you said 'my own parents,'” he added by way of explanation. “Your expression, which had lightened considerably since my little attempt at humor, became quite a bit sadder, but not so sad as to indicate that they were no longer alive.”

“I don't even know that much,” she admitted quietly, looking down for the first time since waking up to this surreal situation in which she found herself. “They don't give me access to news sites, and no one's ever told me what happened to them after I was brought here.”

“In handcuffs,” he pronounced, then added at her shocked look: “You rubbed your wrists as you said that, as if in memory of being restrained.”

“I was woken up in the middle of the night, dragged out of bed, handcuffed and injected with something that knocked me out,” she confirmed, amazed that he read so much out of such little evidence.

He didn't say anything to that, simply whipped out his mobile and began typing furiously away. After a few minutes in which he alternated between typing and scowling down at the screen, Molly continued where she'd left off. “My dorm mate turned me in, I'm sure of it.”

That brought his attention squarely back to her. His eyebrow raised in an expression of surprise. “You were at university?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Just about to apply to medical school.” As his expression turned from surprise to astonishment, she jutted her chin out. “What, is it so shocking that an Omega might not only want to be a doctor, but be intellectually capable of doing so? I'm just as smart as anyone, whoever-you-are,” she added fiercely, leaning forward and unconsciously clenching her fists at her sides. “Just because most Omegas are undereducated doesn't mean they're incapable of learning more than how to read and write and make babies.”

The Alpha then did the most extraordinary thing; he leaned back and laughed. A long, satisfied laugh. When he finally stopped, he was wiping tears from the corners of his eyes while Molly eyed his warily. “That, Miss Hooper, is something I have been waiting to hear for a very long time now. Even my own mother – an exceptional woman in many ways before she lost my father – would never defend her own kind so strongly. Well spoken, Miss Hooper. Well spoken.”

“Who are you?” she finally thought to ask as he fell silent and returned to studying her, although it seemed a bit more closely this time.

“My name is Sherlock Holmes,” he said, still grinning. “And I do believe you are going to fit into my life quite nicely.”

oOo

She seemed truly shocked by his words, as if they'd been the last thing she'd been expecting to hear. Good; he was pleased to have found someone who could put him off-balance, but much preferred to be the one doing the startling and amazing.

He'd come to this House to satisfy a mere physical need, and had found instead a woman – an Omega, at that – worthy of his lasting attention. An Omega who aspired to not only a higher education, but one of the hard sciences to boot. An Omega doctor; what would the world be like if she were ever allowed to fulfill such an ambition?

He was determined to do his best to help her in that endeavor. Perhaps one man couldn't change the system, but one man could certainly help one woman overcome her biology and society's prejudicial expectations in order to achieve such a lofty goal. Practically speaking, however, he understood – and she would, too, once he'd spelled it out for her – that there was only one way he would be able to take her with him.

They would have to Bond. Right now, today, before Madame LeFoy concocted whatever punishment she had in mind for Miss Hooper's rebellious actions against her. Which reminded him... “Why were you and Madame fighting?” he asked before she could question him on in his intentions. He held up a finger to indicate she should wait, however, as his mobile gave a soft “ping”. He squinted down at it, then turned his eyes back to meet hers, his expression serious. “When you started describing what had happened to you, I did some research. Your case was rather famous, since your parents kept your status so well hidden for so long, Molly.”

oOo

She felt a shiver of pleasure at hearing him use her given name for the first time, but remained silent as he continued: “You are simply listed as being turned over for the proper 'training,'” his lip curled in an expression of disdain easily matched by his tone as he said that word. “Your parents were sentenced to five years in prison for fraud and,” he frowned and shook his head before looking at her again, “child abuse.”

She stared at him incredulously. “Child abuse? That's insane! My parents loved me, they wanted the best for me, that's why they hid my status, so I wouldn't have to go through Heats and be forced into a life they knew I would have hated!” Tears sprang into her eyes, the first tears she'd shed in over a year, ever since she'd given up on ever hearing from her parents again. She'd resigned herself to never knowing what happened to them, or at best only finding out long after any punishment they'd been given had already ended. Hiding the status of an Omega was usually treated as a misdemeanor rather than a felony crime; she'd expected to hear that they'd been heavily fined or even jailed for up to eighteen months, but the child abuse angle had increased their punishment to a point she'd never anticipated.

She was so upset at this revelation that her questions for Sherlock were completely forgotten, at least until he spoke again. “Molly – may I call you Molly?” he interrupted himself to ask. She nodded dumbly, wiping absently at the tears still falling from her eyes. He gained her complete attention by reaching and taking her hands in his own.

She felt a jolt of electricity pass between them, widening her eyes as how completely perfect his hands felt on hers. He felt something to, she was sure of it as her wide-eyed stare met his. His eyes, a grayish blue when he'd first started speaking to her, seemed to have darkened into pure gray – no, she realized. It was his pupils, they'd nearly devoured the irises, leaving nothing but slender rims of color around the dark centers. Her own eyes, she supposed, must look much the same, only harder to see the difference with her brown irises. If he even noticed the color of her eyes...

She was babbling. Mentally babbling, but babbling nonetheless. She took a deep, calming breath, but kept her fingers firmly wrapped around those of the Alpha – Sherlock, his name was Sherlock – sitting across from her. “Wh – what did you say?” she finally managed to ask when he seemed as dumbstruck as she.

He gave a little shake, cleared his throat and looked thoroughly uncomfortable. She found her eyes focused on his lips as he parted them; she'd never seen such perfect Cupid's bows in her life. And his throat, so long and white and elegant; how had she missed the perfect column of whiteness rising above the collar of his deep blue dress shirt...

When he finally spoke, his voice seemed a shade deeper, huskier, as if the throat-clearing had done him no good whatsoever. “I asked if I could call you Molly,” he replied, his eyes roaming over features once again, but this time with an element of heat that had been decidedly missing before. 

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, feeling her fingers clench as he made to withdraw his hands from hers. He frowned, a slight frown, one she might have missed if she hadn't been staring at him so intently, then eased his face into a neutral expression as he continued with whatever he'd been about to say to her before the moment had become so fraught with possibility. “Molly, you do realize there's only one solution to your current situation. No matter how much time Madame LeFoy...”

“The Warden,” Molly found herself muttering, then blushed in embarrassment at having uttered her disparaging term for Madame aloud.

He blinked at her, then offered a wry grin. “The Warden,” he agreed. “Sadly that term may be more apropos than you thought. Although I doubt she'll press charges against you – and yes, I understand she provoked you somehow,” he added, raising an imperious had to forestall the objection she was definitely about to voice, “still, the point being, you are an Omega, and she is in charge of your ultimate disposal. Even if I offer to pay the fee and fill out the appropriate paperwork for you to be released into my care, I doubt she would accept it without extra arm-twisting by my brother.” His face morphed into a sour twist. “And I'm afraid my brother is unlikely to want to do me any favors at the moment. Which leaves us only one alternative if I'm to free you from whatever punishment Warden LeFoy chooses to mete out.”

“She's going to let some Alpha Knot me and then send me off to one of the lower-class Houses,” Molly blurted out, anxious that Sherlock understand exactly what fate awaited her if he didn't take her away with him. She dropped her eyes to their joined hands and added in a low voice: “I've never...it would be my first time.”

oOo

Sherlock was once again shocked by the woman sitting across from him, her hands so desperately clinging to his. The shock of electricity that had passed between them when he first touched her had been pushed from his mind by sheer force of will as he attempted to focus on the matter at hand; he still hadn't completely outlined the mad plan that had sprung to mind, but now, to hear this... “You mean you've never had sex with an Alpha?” he asked, suddenly desperate to hear that she wasn't saying what he thought she was saying.

She shook her head, another one of those lovely blushes she'd presented him with earlier staining her cheeks. “I mean I've never...not ever,” she said, clarifying without actually saying the words. “It seemed too risky, even if I only did it with normal Humans or Betas. Even with suppressants Omegas have been known to go into spontaneous Heat, although I've never believed it was as frequently as the news and research journals would have us believe.” She offered up a wry grin as she demonstrated yet again why she was the most extraordinary Omega Sherlock had ever met. “I couldn't take that risk, couldn't chance what my parents had sacrificed for me just for – well, for a fleeting moment's pleasure,” she concluded, somewhat gloomily.

Dear. God. She was a virgin. A twenty-one-year-old Omega virgin. He resolved to give up on being surprised by her; she'd already surprised him more in one hour's conversation than he'd been in the past year. Possibly the past two years, if one discounted the many ways his young nephews could catch him off guard simply because of their youth and relative innocence.

Well. It made no difference; if anything, it strengthened his resolve. And not just because his inner Alpha was howling at the thought of being her first, but because the plans Madame – no, Warden really was the most apt title for the vile woman – Warden LeFoy had already laid out for Molly. “We have to Bond,” he announced quickly, before they could once again get off topic.

That was another thing that intrigued him about Molly, how easily she managed to distract him from his own purpose and desire. Oh, that was the wrong word to use; just thinking caused a sudden physiological reaction in the area of his crotch as his cock began to harden. Good lord, it was like being a teenager all over again, and the bloody woman wasn't even in Heat!

She was gaping at him, eyes fortunately staring directly into his, giving him time to discreetly adjust his jacket to cover the evidence, so to speak. “Yes, you heard me correctly,” he said, his voice coming out a shade more irritably than he'd intended. “I said Bond. Otherwise she'll promise me the moon and ship you off to your fate as soon as the door closes behind me. Especially if she already has someone in mind to give you to,” he added darkly.

oOo

Lifebonding. Pairbonding. Just plain Bonding. Whatever you called it, it was what this man she'd only just me was offering to her as an alternative to the life she'd been threatened with. And whatever else she believed, she knew with absolute certainty that Warden LeFoy fully intended to make good on her threats.

What was worse was knowing that the woman was fully within her rights to do so, and that even if Sherlock called the police right now, the only way he would be allowed to take Molly with him, out of the “Omega Sanctuary” as it was officially designated, would be if he could prove that they'd already Bonded.

“That's a very...it's permanent, a Lifebond,” she felt constrained to point out while her mind ran in frantic circles, trying to find some other alternative even as she knew there weren't any. “You don't even know me, why would you offer to do that for me?”

She really was bewildered. She knew the catalogue of her own faults, thank you very much, and they were really quite extensive, especially when balanced against the few items she could list as her assets. She'd been told, for example, that her hair was quite pretty, which was why she kept it long, but as far as she was concerned her mouth was far too small and her breasts were barely adequate to identify her as female. Her legs weren't very long, either, and she couldn't tan no matter how carefully she applied the sunscreen, she had too many freckles...

“Stop it,” Sherlock ordered crossly. She started and returned to staring at him; how had he known what she was thinking? Or that she was thinking anything at all? “Whatever defects you feel you have, physical or mental, make no difference to me. I'm offering to help you for multiple reasons; suffice it to say, you interest me, and your situation is intolerable to anyone who, like ourselves, believes the current status Omegas hold in our society to be willfully backward and short-sighted at best.”

That did it. That statement was the only thing she needed to hear from him to convince her that he was sincere, that this wasn't some bizarre attempt to lure her into a worse situation than the one she currently faced. She might not know Sherlock Holmes from Adam, but she knew Warden Bitch-face. The decision, in the end, was remarkably easy to make.

She looked him straight in the eyes, smiled the bravest smile she could manage, squared her shoulders and tipped her head back, exposing her throat to him in clear invitation.

oOo

Sherlock was on the bed in a shot, his lips and teeth against the soft, inviting skin of her throat, his hands pulling her body tightly against his. Pairbonding wasn't some mystical, mysterious joining of two souls the way poets and far too many ignorant Normals and Betas imagined it; it was a simple matter of biology, like so much else was. The combination of Alpha and Omega, blood and saliva. All it took was one deep bite, the Alpha male taking the Omega female's blood into his body even as his saliva entered her bloodstream, and the deed was done. Yes, basic biological compatibility helped speed up the process, but any Alpha could Bond with any Omega. His parents were proof of that; Mycroft and Petra were even proof of that, no matter how carefully she'd been selected from whatever field of candidates had been presented to Mycroft once he announced his decision to seek a Lifemate.

This, he knew, was different. Neither had been selected for the other, no genetic screening had been done; he had no idea of Molly's fertility cycle or what a shared Heat would be like...but he found himself quite looking forward to finding out. And judging by the soft moans and whines issuing from her mouth as he stroked her body and nipped and sucked at her throat, so did she.

A pity there wasn't time for the two of them to actually seal the deal sexually, as it were; his mental countdown to how much time Warden LeFoy would allow them was just about up. If he'd timed it correctly in his mind, she should be walking in on them, demanding that he leave – in an urbane, sophisticated and once again mostly unaccented manner – within the next five minutes. She would have taken the time to adjust her appearance, although he found it within him to feel a sort of savage glee at the fact that there would be very little she could do about the line of scratches down her left cheek. But her hair would be perfect and her clothing unmussed; her poise would have returned as well as her confidence and he would be dismissed.

He almost pitied her, knowing that all her careful plans and grooming were about to be shown for naught.

Almost. The thought of giving Molly over to some unknown Alpha to be pawed and slobbered over for the simple desire to strip her of her virginity made his blood boil.

That thought brought a corresponding roughness to his movements that made Molly gasp, but her hands were grasping his shoulders as if she never planned to release him, and the word she moaned out was: “Yes.”

oOo

“Warden” LeFoy's arrival was almost to the minute exactly when and how Sherlock had predicted. He and Molly were sitting side by side on the bed, hands clasped as the door slammed open and LeFoy marched into the room, slowing down only as she was met by two pairs of expectant eyes.

She glared at Molly suspiciously before turning her gaze on Sherlock. He allowed her to feel as if she were in control of the situation by remaining seated, unfazed by the prospect of whatever dominance game she was about to employ. Even if she went off script, he anticipated every single thing she might do to try and retain control of the situation.

“Mr. Holmes, I'm sorry to interrupt,” she began, only to be interrupted in turn by the very man she was addressing. 

“No, Madame LeFoy, I don't believe you are,” he said, rising smoothly to his feet and pulling Molly along with him. “However, what you do or don't want means nothing to me. Molly and I are leaving.”

Oh, that got her back up; she bared her teeth at him before she caught herself, smoothing her expression into one of calm professionalism. Only a trained eye – or the gaze of someone who felt a great deal of animosity toward her, such as Molly clearly did and well deserved to – would catch the slight tick in her cheek as she spoke. “I'm very sorry, Mr. Holmes, but unless you've filled out the proper paperwork requesting Miss Hooper to be transferred to your care – along with the appropriate fees and chargers, of course – as well as filing a Statement of Intent with the appropriate government offices, I'm afraid that's impossible.”

“Not if we've Bonded,” Sherlock replied, taking the four steps necessary to bring himself and Molly directly in front of LeFoy, stopping less than a foot away and purposefully invading her personal space in a way designed to make her either challenge him or give way.

His words, however, were more than enough to shock her into immobility. “That's....you haven't,” she gasped out in protest, but Molly eased down the collar of her shirt and offered her a smug smile as she silently invited the other woman to examine the wound on her throat.

The teethmarks were clear and precise, the blood still seeping out of the wound. In case there was any question, Sherlock bared his teeth at LeFoy, Molly's blood still staining the inside of his mouth.

She backed away, her face a mask of fury, but knowing there was nothing she could do to stop them short of holding them at gunpoint. “I'll be sure to file the proper paperwork in the morning,” Sherlock shot over his shoulder as he took Molly's hand more firmly in his and skirted around the immobile form of her adversary. A woman who had clearly underestimated both of them. He paused on the threshhold of the room, looking a Molly and asking: “Is there anything you wish to bring with you? One of those insipid romance novels, perhaps? Some of the ghastly clothes they've been forcing you to wear?”

She shook her head. He already knew that none of the items in the room had belonged to her before her incarceration, and that she wanted nothing to remind her of her time here.

He shot a nasty grin over his shoulder as they left, making sure to catch LeFoy's eyes as he did so.

The glower she sent after him promised nothing good. 

_Let her seethe,_ he told himself complacently. _There's not a damned thing she can do about it._

oOo

Molly could hardly believe it as Sherlock's warm hand continued to clasp hers, tugging her along at a brisk pace as they left the room that had been her prison for two years. Then they were exiting the private area where the Omegas lived and entering the sitting area where clients waited; after that they were walking past the front desk where an open-mouthed Beta receptionist watched them leave.

And after that? Molly could hardly believe it, but they were outside. Not in the walled gardens of the House, where she'd only occasionally been allowed to visit. Not the inner courtyard of Madame's private wing, where she'd been forced to stand and listen as her therapist rattled off the reasons she believed Molly wasn't ready to join the House's general population, but outside-outside. Standing with the oversized wooden doors behind her, firmly shut.

Sherlock's hand tugging at hers pulled her back into the moment; she could stand and bask in her relative freedom once they were...wherever they were going, actually. Which could be anywhere. She laughed, giddy with the feeling of freedom, however limited. She was still an Omega, but no longer at the whim of Madame or any other Alpha.

She belonged to one Alpha, who had willing Lifebonded with her just to keep her from suffering a minute longer than she had to. No matter what their future held, she would always remember what he'd done for her with more than gratitude.

It was a debt that could never be repaid, but she vowed then and there to be the best Lifemate he could ever ask for.

If she'd known then exactly how difficult and stubborn a man Sherlock Holmes could be, what an unusual life he lead, she might have hesitated to make such a vow. Or perhaps not; she wasn't exactly an ordinary Omega, which made them uniquely suited for one another, even if they weren't entirely aware of that fact just yet.  


Or not; she wasn't exactly an ordinary Omega, which made them uniquely suited for one another, even if they weren't entirely aware of that fact just yet.


End file.
